Two homicides near Columbia within one day

Two people were killed in Columbia in the span of a day, Howard County police said Tuesday.

A Baltimore bail bondswoman was fatally shot late Monday and a man was stabbed to death in an apartment complex parking lot Tuesday afternoon, doubling the county's total number of homicides for the year.

Police, responding to several calls from people reporting that they'd heard gunshots, found Nichole Bernadette McNair, 42, in the 8700 block of Hayshed Lane in the village of Long Reach at about 10 p.m. Monday. McNair was taken to Howard County General Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Investigators believe that a car found idling at the scene of the shooting had been driven there by McNair, who lived in the 4300 block of Nicholas Ave. in the Herring Park neighborhood of Baltimore. Police said they traced the car to Global Security, a bail bonds company on North Point Boulevard in Baltimore County, but were unsure whether McNair was working for the company at the time of her death.

Baltimore City court records show McNair appeared in several cases as a bail bondswoman for Global Security. However, employees at the company and an affiliate in the city, known as 4 Aces Bail Bonds, said Tuesday they had no record of McNair ever working for them.

McNair was also the defendant in a domestic violence assault case in May of this year. Those charges were later dropped.

At around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, police received a report of a man bleeding in a parking lot in the 5500 block of Harpers Farm Road. Police believe the man fell against a parked car and set off the vehicle's alarm, which caught the caller's attention.

The man, whose identity will be released after his family is notified, was pronounced dead at Howard County General Hospital.

There were four homicides in Howard County in 2010. McNair's death and the stabbing are the third and fourth killings in the county this year.